Duskbound

Aria sat on one side of the table, a spread of sugary treats separating her from Velik. She idly picked at a pastry with a fork as she considered his request. "It's a bit forward, don't you think?" she eventually said. "We really don't know each other that well, and what you're proposing requires a great deal of trust between everyone involved."

"More so on our side than yours," Velik argued. "What's to stop you from taking the treasure and teleporting away? It might be worth burning your reputation with the guild for the complete haul of a lost vault."

"Hmm. Yes, I suppose there is that. What makes you so sure I'm trustworthy then?"

Nothing. We're taking a chance on you because otherwise, the plan doesn't work. The way Jensen had explained it, if they could eliminate the spatial storage rental fee, the most expensive part of the trip would be getting the border passes. Velik wasn't entirely sure what that entailed, but apparently it involved a lot of money exchanging hands through backroom connections to keep their entry into Slokara unofficial. In theory, this expense was justified by not paying any sort of tax to the Slokaran government on whatever they uncovered. Enjoy exclusive adventures from My Virtual Library Empire

The original plan had called for large-scale harvesting of monsters on the way and hitting as many as two or three sites in a multi-month-long operation involving over a hundred people. Jensen thought they could bring the number down to a half dozen, go in quietly, and make the whole venture profitable by removing almost all the overhead.

"You dealt fairly with me and you didn't let politics color your opinion of my abilities," Velik said. "Besides, I'm sure that, as a gold-ranked monster hunter, you're aware that this expedition was supposed to include a substantial guild presence. At the moment, they're trying to leverage their contribution to force a destination we don't want. Wouldn't it be fun to keep them from having it their way?"

Aria giggled and took a bit from the pastry she'd been toying with. After a few moments of chewing, she said, "While that is enticing, going in with so few would be a dangerous proposition. There's a reason a [Vault Seeker] leads a caravan of hundreds. Besides, we'd have to do all the harvesting ourselves, and I have no interest in hacking up monster bodies."

"But if someone else did it, you have the extradimensional storage needed to hold all the valuables?" Velik pressed.

"Maybe," Aria said. "For the sake of this conversation, let's say that I believe I can handle the logistics of treasure relocation without involving anyone else. How much is that worth?"

"An equal share of whatever the group recovered is the offer."

"How generous," Aria said dryly. "And if nothing is recovered?"

Velik shrugged. "Then we wasted our time and we all go home disappointed? But I doubt that'll happen. If a bunch of rich merchants and nobles were all willing to gamble on a [Vault Seeker] bringing back something of enormous value, there's no reason to think they were wrong."

"I wouldn't say that. Plenty can go wrong, even if the treasure is right where your friend thinks it is. With such a small group, the risks are that much greater."

"Even with a team of gold-ranked hunters? I didn't think you had so little confidence in yourself."

"That will depend entirely on who's on that team," Aria said bluntly. "I know what I can do. I know that you're strong, but also reckless. You would not have defeated that hydra without my assistance. You jumped into a fight you had no clue how to win and thought you'd figure it out in the heat of the moment, and that doesn't make me want to work with you."

"Sure, but how many monsters have the kind of regenerative capabilities of a hydra? Literally anything else would have been dead."

Before the argument could really get going, Jensen hustled into the restaurant. He spotted them immediately and strode over, a frown on his face. "You started without me," he said to Velik.

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"We got here early. Didn't see much point in waiting."

"I'm sure you didn't," Jensen muttered. "Let me take over the negotiations."

"Happily," Velik said, standing up. He wasn't sure exactly what it was about this scenario that was annoying him, but something was. It wasn't just the clear dismissal or the fact that Jensen obviously didn't want Velik trying to persuade Aria to help, even though Velik was the one with a connection to her. There was some other burr brushing up against his skin, some note of reproach in Jensen's voice like Velik had screwed something up.

Whatever. I don't care about this project. I just want a quick, foolproof way past the border that won't restrict my own investigation. Jensen's the one who needs Aria's cooperation; he can talk to her.

Washing his hands of the whole thing, Velik made himself scarce. In a way, he was starting to regret burning his bridges with the coliseum. He hadn't hunted anything except that hydra, and that had been a thoroughly unsatisfying fight after the first half an hour. It was too bad the lands around Cravel had been so thoroughly pacified that he'd need a full day's travel just to find any sort of monster.

With any luck, they'd be on the road in a week. In the meantime, he had an archive to scour while it was still available. Since there was no telling if he'd even still have his rank when he got back, it was best to take advantage of his status while he could. Unfortunately, that meant more boring book work.

It'll be worth it, he told himself as he trudged down the streets back to the guild hall.

* * *

Velik emerged back onto the open street in front of the guild hall six hours later, just after the sun finished setting. Andel Thett had pretty much exhausted everything there was to find in the archive regarding flesh beasts, flesh-shaping classes, dungeons, and whatever scraps of mythology were tangentially related to those topics, but that didn't mean there wasn't plenty left to learn.

With access to the bestiaries full of powerful monsters, Velik had a wealth of new knowledge about the rarer and more dangerous creatures that inhabited the wild lands between kingdoms. He'd focused specifically on the southern reaches of Ghestal and the mountains that separated it from Slokara, and on the area known as the Verdant Belt where the monster trappers had captured the flesh beast that had made its way to the coliseum's killing floor.

"I was wondering if you were going to come back out," Jensen said. He'd been leaning against the wall of the guild hall, but Velik was content to ignore him while he took a few deep breaths of relatively fresh air. The city had a smell to it he found unpleasant, but it was nothing compared to being trapped in that tomb of paper and ink.

"There's only so much I can take at once," Velik replied.

"I'm the same. I can study; I can practice with various toys and artifacts from my father's collection; I can train. But eventually, I need to step away from it all and just get outside the city. That's how I ended up as a [Tracker] originally. Father was furious. Hah. At least I thought so at the time. It was nothing compared to when I came home with [Vault Seeker]. Everything he wanted me to lose in my old class, amplified instead."

"Are we going out for a drink while we commiserate on our pasts?" Velik asked.

"No, no. I doubt you'd enjoy that, anyway. No, I came to tell you that I managed to bring Aria back around. Probably ended up costing us a bit more than if you'd just waited for me to show up, but the important part is that we got her and she has access to the storage we need. The next step is getting Torwin back here, but he's still stuck in Heldsmouth hunting down pixies."

"Pixies? Like, little people with wings, six inches tall, travel through interconnected tree root systems?"

"Yes, those pixies. They're not particularly dangerous, but they are hard to catch. That's why they made Torwin go do it. The sooner he finishes, the sooner he comes back, and the sooner we can recruit him to the team."

"If he even goes for it," Velik said.

"Right. That's why I want you to go to Heldsmouth, find him, and get him onboard. Then, do whatever you need to do to get him out of that job so we can get going. In the meantime, I've got Shelir Blendstin willing to get us the border passes with the reduced team, though we'll be taking Giller along as his representative. She'll be in charge of securing his share of the treasure. And I'm going to work on finding us one more, someone I think will be a big help."

"Who's that?" Velik asked.

"Your old friend, Sildra."

"Why her? She can't be past level 15. That won't be much help."

"For you, idiot. The whole reason we're going to Slokara is so you can follow up on a lead about that whole flesh cave with the corrupted seeds incident. She's got a divine mandate from Morgus himself to work on that. I figured you two could work together."

That was pretty solid logic, but he was still worried about being slowed down by someone with such a low level. As long as they were traveling in a carriage or by horseback, maybe it would be fine, but sooner or later, they'd have to go by foot, and Sildra would slow them down immensely. Then again, Jensen was barely past level 20 himself, and his presence wasn't optional.

"Alright. You'll take care of getting a message to her and bringing her here?" Velik asked.

"And you get Torwin back here. Then we can start the expedition."

It can't come soon enough.